Microsoft’s Build conference sold out in one hour

Tickets for Microsoft’s annual developers conference were gone almost as soon as they went up today, selling out in just an hour. By comparison, it took a whole 24 hours for tickets to last year’s show to get snapped up. The conference, which takes place in San Francisco on April 29th through May 1st, costs $2,095 to attend, though Microsoft also sells lower cost tickets to students. Now that tickets are gone, Microsoft’s opened up a waitlist.

At last year’s Build, Microsoft spent three hours of its keynote detailing Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1, along with debuting its voice assistant Cortana, who is headed to Windows 10. It also announced the Lumia 930 phone, universal Windows apps, and its revamped version of Office for Windows machines with touchscreens.

Microsoft said yesterday that this year’s conference should be a big one, with more details of Windows 10. The company showed off new consumer features of the upcoming OS (which will be a free update to Windows 7 and 8.1 users), as well as its HoloLens augmented reality device.

The quick sellout has become commonplace for these developer conferences, so much so that Apple and Google have had to set up ticket lotteries so as to avoid their websites being crushed and to make it fair for people in awkward timezones. Both companies, as well as Microsoft, have balanced that by trying to stream all the sessions as they’re happening.